This invention relates to shipping and storage pallets and more particularly to plastic pallets embodying a twin sheet construction.
Pallets have traditionally been formed of wood. Wood pallets, however, have many disadvantages. For example, they are subject to breakage and thus are not reusable over an extended period of time. Wood pallets also take up a considerable amount of valuable floor space in the warehouse when they are not in use. In an effort to solve some of the problems associated with wood pallets, plastic pallets have been employed with some degree of success. In one generally successful form of plastic pallet design, a twin sheet construction has been used in which upper and lower plastic sheets are formed in separate molding operations and the two sheets are then selectively fused or knitted together in a suitable press to form a reinforced double wall structure. Even these twin sheet plastic pallets have drawbacks however. For example, when used, as is common, as the base for a cardboard sleeve to form an open top container, the containers are difficult to stack for storage purposes and, once stacked, produce an ungainly and unstable assembly. Further, the prior art twin sheet pallets fail to make provision to preclude tipping of the pallet off of the forks of a forklift truck in the presence of an unbalanced load on the pallet.